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It has been a year since a generation of Kenyans, now dubbed “Gen Z”, shook the political foundations of this country to their core. The government met what had initially begun as a rallying cry to #RejectFinanceBill2024 with brute force, high-handedness, and obstinacy. The government’s response would lead the protesters to reinvent the art of activism and call for seven days of rage that would ultimately culminate in #OccupyParliament.
The first two days of protests, held in Nairobi on 18 and 19 June and soon spreading to the rest of the country, were quite peaceful. I remember attending these first two demonstrations in Voi; no one picketed or vandalised anyone’s property. It was an organic, decentralised, and leaderless movement, and although we had turned out in large, unsynchronised numbers initially, our guiding ethos was peace.
In the beginning, the Kenya Kwanza political machinery was scoffing at the gathering clouds. After all, to them, this was a privileged population that ate chicken at KFC and ordered Uber rides from their latest iPhones, bored and out to create content rather than to protest. Moreover, Kenya Kwanza had the numbers in parliament; who would dare stop them from bulldozing the bill through? After two days of protests, their only compromise would be to lower, among other things, the 16 per cent VAT on bread. Marie-Antoinette, I think, would have fallen in love with this “let them eat cake” attitude. But as they would soon realise, theirs had been a classic case of poking at a hornet’s nest.
The first drops of rain began falling on Thursday, the 20th, with the fatal shooting of Rex Kanyike Masai. This ushered in a new phase of angry protests, which would be conducted through a series of social media-mobilised occupations. By 7:40 p.m. of the fateful Thursday, social media was awash with news of the murder of Rex Masai. His death was initially recorded as a case of sudden death. A video clip portraying the alleged shooter discharging his firearm went viral and yet, to this day, the person who murdered Rex Masai has not been charged.
On being questioned at the inquest held on 9 June, the police commandant who was then the OCS of the platoon that killed Rex denied having any knowledge of the discharge of live ammunition at peaceful protesters. People all over the country were enraged and vowed to travel to Nairobi to stand in solidarity with Rex Masai. Those who could travel to Nairobi from other parts of the country were invited to join the protests in the city and this is how I found myself boarding the SGR train to Nairobi on the following day, Friday.
Mobilisation was conducted through X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok using hashtags such as #JusticeForRex, #RutoMustGo, and #OccupyParliament, which would eventually lead to calls for #totalshutdown and #OccupyStateHouse. By this time, the Finance Bill had sailed through the second reading in parliament despite people’s protests and voters directly communicating with their representatives by sending “salamu” demanding that the punitive bill be rejected.
On the Friday, Gen Z youth planned to visit City Mortuary to mourn Rex Masai then attend Jummah prayers at Jamia Mosque. Saturday would involve occupying bars and clubs where music would be paused at midnight and chants of “Ruto Must Go” and “Reject Finance Bill” would rise to a crescendo. Sunday was a day to #OccupyChurches to de-platform politicians who had made it a habit of dishing out millions in cash as offerings at church services. On Monday, Gen Z were to continue sending “salamu” to the 204 members of parliament who had voted for the bill and boycotting their businesses. And then D-day arrived, June 25th, the mother of all protests.
June 25th: Bloody Tuesday
On the morning of 25 June, the country pulsated with a sense of hope and unity I had never felt before. I remember being stopped by a random mama, probably in her 50s, as I walked to the bus stop. I did not know her, and neither did she know me, but she was beaming with pride at what we intended to do. She wished me luck and told me that, as the youth, we must ensure that we accomplish our mission and chase away the leaders who had betrayed the voice of the people. She also said that she would pray for my well-being. If these were not the stars aligning to usher in a great day, I couldn’t see how else the day would turn out.
By 9:00 a.m., people from all walks of life were streaming into the central business district. The sounds of whistles, shouts, and music blaring from Bluetooth speakers rang in the air. This cacophony was the rupture of an unchained generation out to burst the collective illusion of “an untouchable Kenyan man”, the political class. A generation born into debt, dysfunction, and deception by the political class was finally questioning the fatalism preached by their parents. Gen Z could not accept just sitting back, folding their arms, and accepting things the way they are because that is how Kenya has always been; no, we ought to be doing better.
The June 25 protests turned out to be different from any other demonstrations that Kenya had ever witnessed. This was more than just the citizenry revolting against high taxation, corruption, and police brutality. Rather, the Gen Z protests were an existential revolt, where the youth were confronting not just the state, but Kenya’s history itself. A moment when children of a post-colonial promise, raised beneath the portraits of presidents, the loyalty pledge, and a national prayer in the form of a beautiful national anthem, finally questioned this promise. On this day, a nation with a colonial legacy of inherited tolerance of state violence refused to be controlled by fear. We could no longer remain silent. Coined by Juliet Wanjira Wanjiru, a key figurehead of the protests, the mantra driving everyone was, “When we lose our fear, they lose their power”. We had to occupy parliament, and occupy we did.
By occupying parliament, Gen Z enacted a raw form of polity not rooted in legislation but in justice and the collective courage of the people. June 25 can therefore never be a moment of populist fervour but is a collective declaration that “we, the polity” are not defined by those who lead us but by our courage and our conscience. This was a watershed moment. The people were taking back control, and by doing so, they shook the Ruto-led regime. The regime did not fear the chaos that was to ensue. No, it feared losing control. As Jake Gyllenhaal succinctly puts in his 2013 psychological thriller, Enemy, “Control. It’s all about control. Every dictatorship has one obsession, and that’s it.”
In response, the state turned the city into a war zone. The military was released into the streets, and, according to the BBC documentary Blood Parliament, a member of the Kenya Defence Forces shot and killed Eric Shieni within the grounds of parliament. Many youths were killed in cold blood, 63 in number according to the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC). We shall honour them. We shall not forget their sacrifice. Beasley Kogi, Emmanuel Gigs Tata, Ericson Kyalo, David Chege, and many, many others. We shall remember your names.
As Gen Z, we still demand that justice to be served. Among the many committed by this regime, these deaths, I say, are the worst sin. To take a life is to steal a life, and theft is the worst sin. That is Khaled Hosseini’s main message in The Kite Runner: “There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.” Twenty-nine youths are also still missing following the June 2025 abductions. Where are they?
Never forget. Say their names.
The aftermath: The dark months
A history written in blood is indelible. Narratives might be woven to control, manipulate, and sanitise how the said history is viewed, but the truth, obstinate as always, stands out. That is the legacy of that fateful Tuesday, the 25th of June, 2024. It had begun as normal day on which a generation had vowed to come out and voice their dissatisfaction with the Ruto regime and the then-proposed finance bill. They were met with lethal force that ultimately led to the deaths of 63 youths, state-sanctioned abductions, mass killings, and forced disappearances.
President Ruto declined to assent to the finance bill and called for its withdrawal on the 26th of June, hearty claps ringing from the smiling politicians seated behind him at State House. I was confused. Angry even. If the bill was to be eventually withdrawn, was it necessary to kill 63 youths first? What followed, on top of the continuing state repression, was the perfected art of manipulation of the citizenry by the state. Linguistic manipulation, where the president announced that the state would apply “austerity measures” to address public debt and government expenditure, was the beginning. “Dialogue” was used to delay justice. Calls for “peace” and “don’t burn the country” were made to quell dissent. The Orwellian “war is peace and freedom is slavery” all over again. Then the cabinet was dissolved, only for the same cabinet secretaries to be reshuffled to other dockets. The opposition was also invited into government, and a “broad-based government” was formed. After that, the deputy president was impeached.
In July, many dismembered bodies were found at a dump site in Kware, while other bodies were found floating in ponds, like that of third-year JKUAT student Denzel Omondi. And then came the shocking revelation that Safaricom was sharing people’s location data, enabling the regime to track down and abduct the citizenry, facilitating disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The killings would escalate to a point such that by December, according to the KHRC, there were a reported 97 cases of femicide. And even as the police were suppressing the #EndFemicideKE protests, they were also abducting satirical cartoonists like Kibet Bull.
The second half of 2024, I would say, revealed the true colours of post-colonial Kenya, something that Colonel Arthur Young, the shortest-serving colonial police chief, discovered in 1954 – that Kenya is a police state. Gen Z confronted this painful truth, and continue to do so with the killing of Albert Ojwang at the hands of the police. Everything, as Khaled Hosseini wrote, begins with theft. Theft of truth. Theft of dignity. Theft of the future. June 25th was a stand against this slow erosion of meaning and the quiet theft of selfhood in a land that has long called itself free. The illusion of control cracked that day.
